Darius Vassell

Darius Vassell Markus ( born June 13, 1980 in Sutton Coldfield / Birmingham, England) is an English footballer of Jamaican descent. Since 2010 he plays for Leicester City in the Football League Championship.

Playing career

Vassell played as a winger for Manchester City in the English Premier League. He is also a member of the England national football team since 2002. Due to its rapid commencement Vassell is considered as an ideal substitute for an already fatigued opponent's defense.

He grew up in the south of the city of Sutton Coldfield, Wylde Green in, and played at the beginning in the Birmingham Boys League before received him the talent scout based in the Birmingham club Aston Villa at the age of thirteen years in the youth department. The tech savvy Vassell succeeded here in the 1996/97 season with 39 hits an extraordinary achievement.

In April 1998, the 1.71 meter relatively small Vassell signed his first professional contract with Aston Villa. In the first season he made his debut in the Premier League as a substitute against Middlesbrough FC. His first climax, he then experienced in the first round of the UEFA Cup, as he, after coming on in the 81st minute, a 1:2 gap with the Norwegian guest Strømsgodset IF by two goals in stoppage time in a 3-2 victory transformed.

Although it was used at this time already in the U18 and U21 national team, Vassell had to wait over two years for a breakthrough in his club before he 's 3-0 victory against Bradford City in February 2001, his first two Premier League goals scored. In the following season 2001 /02 he then formed with the Colombian national player Juan Pablo Angel playing a very strong strike partnership and scored 16 goals. In addition, it was first used in the English national football team in February 2002 by Sven- Göran Eriksson 's friendly against the Netherlands in Amsterdam, where he replaced the injured Michael Owen from the start. Vassell scored the only goal in a 1-1 draw for his team in this game. The conclusion of this very successful season consisted of three missions during the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

However, the positive trend could not continue Vassell in the subsequent seasons 2002/ 03 and 2003/ 04, scored only eleven and ten goals and had always struggled with minor injuries, the more difficult it is to him to confirm his former shape. In the National Team, he continued to come to inserts and came off the bench in all four games of England during Euro 2004 in Portugal. Negative highlight and end of the season was his missed penalty in the quarter- final against Portugal, when he failed to Ricardo. Since then, he has not been called back into the England national team.

During the tenth match day of the season 2004/05 Vassell pulled against Fulham a fracture of the ankle to, was sidelined four months and came in the championship round total of only two hits. On his return, the injury turned out to be not completely healed and only after intensive medical investigation moved Vassell for two million pounds sterling at the beginning of the 2005/ 06 Manchester City and signed a contract there until the end of season 2008/09.

From July 2009 to May 2010 he was playing for the Turkish club MKE Ankaragucu. Afterwards Vassell was without a club until October 2010, before he signed Leicester City in the English Championship participants.

Others

• Vassell is a professing Christian. The fact that a few years earlier he survived a car accident, he founded with his religious beliefs.